$1.9 Million.
Vice President Cheney’s tax refund.
New Report: Rumsfeld ‘Personally Involved’ In Torture Allegations at Gitmo
Salon reports new evidence that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was intimately involved in prisoner abuse at the Guantanamo Bay detention center.
According to a Dec. 20, 2005 Army inspector general’s report on Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the former commanding general in charge of Gitmo, Rumsfeld approved an interrogation plan for Mohammed al-Kahtani, the alleged 20th hijacker:
In a sworn statement to the inspector general, [Lt. Gen. Randall] Schmidt described Rumsfeld as “personally involved” in the interrogation and said that the defense secretary was “talking weekly” with Miller.
Rumsfeld developed an interrogation plan that required the Gitmo detainee to “stand naked in front of a female interrogator, was accused of being a homosexual, and was forced to wear women’s underwear and to perform ‘dog tricks’ on a leash.” Schmidt said that the open-ended policies Rumsfeld approved, and that the apparent lack of supervision of day-to-day interrogations permitted the wide-scale abuse to take place.
The report contradicts Rumsfeld’s earlier statements.
The people down there at Guantanamo Bay, under the President’s orders, have been treated humanely and they should be treated humanely“¦There’s no torture going on down there and there hasn’t been. [WPHT-AM Philadelphia, 6/21/05]
And let there be no doubt, the treatment of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay is proper, it’s humane, it’s appropriate, and it is fully consistent with international conventions. No detainee has been harmed, no detainee has been mistreated in any way. [DoD Briefing, 1/22/02]
Only relatively low-ranking military officials have been punished but the abuse of detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere started at the top.
– Ben Kabak
Another politically-motivated Cheney-authorized leak
of classified info. “Vice President Dick Cheney directed his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, on July 12, 2003 to leak to the media portions of a then-highly classified CIA report that Cheney hoped would undermine the credibility of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson…according to Libby’s grand jury testimony in the CIA leak case and sources who have read the classified report,” Murray Waas reports in the National Journal.
Bush: Rumsfeld doing a heckuva job.
President Bush has released a statement of support: “Secretary Rumsfeld’s energetic and steady leadership is exactly what is needed at this critical period. He has my full support and deepest appreciation.”
O’Reilly Reversal: “There Is No Attack On Easter”
Last night, Bill O’Reilly attacked Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal Constitution for writing this:
Still, fresh from their holy war against “holiday trees” and “the fat guy in the red suit,” talk show hosts are taking up arms in defense of an embattled Easter, which they claim is under attack by the same political correctness that supposedly menaced Christmas trees and Santa.
O’Reilly called Tucker’s piece a “nutty diatribe” and then set the record straight:
First of all, there is no attack on Easter. Only two dumb incidents, one in St. Paul, Minnesota, where a secretary was asked to take down decorations featuring the Easter Bunny. And one in Georgia, where an Easter event was changed to a Spring event. After pressure, it’s back to an Easter event.
Gosh, where could Tucker have gotten the idea that talk show hosts like O’Reilly claimed Easter was under attack? Bill O’Reilly, 4/11/06:
Although some left-wingers in the media deny it, we have documented a number of cases where Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter have been attacked by secular interests. Lawsuits and corporate policies have proved this point over and over again.
When will those nutty left-wingers get their fact straight.
Toxic (press) releases.
The EPA spins, and the AP takes the bait.
Gen. John Batiste, who led the 1st Infantry Division
in Iraq, appeared on all three network talk shows this morning “calling for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation.”
In 2005, Exxon CEO Raked in 190K a Day
Average Americans are struggling to keep up with persistently high gas prices, now approaching $3 a gallon. Testifying before Congress last November, Exxon CEO Lee Raymond blamed the problem on “global supply and demand” and assured the public that “we’re all in this together.”
Last year, Raymond made do with “a total compensation package” of just $69.7 million or $190,915 a day, including weekends.
After his haul in 2005, Raymond has decided to retire. It’s seems that, for Raymond, not working is even more lucrative than working:
Exxon is giving Lee Raymond one of the most generous retirement packages in history, nearly $400 million, including pension, stock options and other perks, such as a $1 million consulting deal, two years of home security, personal security, a car and driver, and use of a corporate jet for professional purposes.
Exxon is now facing several “shareholder resolutions this year that criticize the company’s level of executive pay and seek to rein it in.”
ThinkFast: April 14, 2006
64 percent of Americans “want all or some of the U.S. troops in Iraq to come home now,” according to a new USA Today/Gallup Poll.
Six senators have signed onto a bipartisan bill to curb the Pentagon’s plans to increase out-of-pocket healthcare costs on military retirees. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) said, “Especially in a time of war, it is unthinkable that the administration would even consider dramatically increasing healthcare costs for those who have sacrificed for our country.”
In a move “decried by some as state-sponsored segregation,” Nebraska’s conservative state legislature has divided the Omaha school system into three districts: “one mostly black, one predominantly white and one largely Hispanic.”
FEMA’s massive post-Katrina housing program has produced “vast sums of waste and misspent funds,” now likely to “top $1 billion and perhaps much more,” a series of government audits show.
President Bush’s spat with Harry Reid over immigration signals a shift to the right for Bush on the issue, the NYT notes. “[I]f Bush really wants compromise, why lash out at Reid? Or is he just looking for a face-saving way out of his guest-worker plan in light of conservative criticism?” Read more
